


Composure

by nonky



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 07:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18516748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: Prompt by jaune_chat on LJ: Dollhouse, any, Epitaph Minus 1 - the first wave of calls that changed everything





	Composure

Adelle made it a point to have someone else make it a point to listen to the police band radios and such. She hadn't risen to her current position with Rossum Corporation just to do busy work, and it probably kept a particularly inept guard out of the way during the workday.

She didn't think much of the first few calls asking for ambulances for victims in shock - conscious but confused, possibly concussed. It was simple enough, and one could be concussed falling off a chair, she'd told her assistant crisply.

"Yes, Ma'am, but . . . There are thousands of them," the young woman said faintly.

Adelle chose to call her concern the grandstanding of an employee either wanting to be sent home early for the day, or desperate to get a promotion. She fired her.

Next in line was moved up by lunch, looking pale but eager to do the work. Adelle smiled, once, and took the stack of messages from the radio monitoring; more 911 calls, and the victims were not in shock or concussed at all.

Waving her hand to get the new assistant out, Adelle sat and read through every transcript. There had been thousands, surely, but now were tens of thousands.

She had yet to find out the cases of people wiped so amnesiac they were barely more than meat would hit one million cases by the end of the week. She had no notion there was nothing to be done. There was no name for it yet, nor any real idea it was a plague that would shape the world forever. Coincidence, however, did not encompass mass casualties - someone had planned this moment. They were no doubt pleased.

Somehow, she knew not to call her employers and ask. It was unbecoming to play the ingenue in her position. It would do no good, and her time would be better spent thinking of a way to protect the helpless individuals finger painting downstairs. The employees were free to leave as they wished or stay and be useful; Dolls had no sense of self-preservation or ability to say 'no.'

Villlagers in Madagascar jungles listened to radio stations; language didn't matter to the technology, nor did comprehension. Infants would be effected just the same, though they would have to be exposed some different way than adults. Anyone who took a phone call was gone. Anyone who turned on the news to find out what they should do was stripped of memories and self. Anyone who tried to go for help would stumble past a device left burning out signals, having already burned out the people who had turned it on.

Perhaps the Dolls were fortunate, she thought sadly. Perhaps they were spared something much worse than imbecilic bliss and eternally vanishing days.

She was responsible here. She had maintained her standards under pressure before, and would do the same now. They were inside a fortress, and she would run things like a siege was underway.

Adelle DeWitt took the transcripts from her lap and folded the pages around the pieces of her tea set; this new world was hardly the place for porcelain and ritual.


End file.
